Sales of personal devices, such as smartphones and wearables, continue to increase. Thus, more personal devices are brought by users into the automotive context. Smartphones can already be used in some vehicle models to access a wide range of vehicle information, to start the vehicle, and to open windows and doors. Some wearables are capable of providing real-time navigation information to the driver. Device manufacturers are implementing frameworks to enable a more seamless integration of their brand of personal devices into the driving experience.
BLUETOOTH technology may be included in various user devices to allow the devices to communicate with one another. BLUETOOTH low energy (BLE) is another wireless technology designed to provide for communication of data between devices. As compared to BLUETOOTH, BLE offers communication of smaller amounts of data with reduced power consumption.
BLE devices may perform the roles of central device or peripheral device. Central devices wirelessly scan for advertisements by peripheral devices, while peripheral devices make the advertisements. Once the peripheral device connects to the central device, the peripheral device may discontinue the advertisement, such that other central devices may no longer be able to wirelessly identify it or connect to it until the existing connection is terminated.
BLE devices transfer data using concepts referred to as services and characteristics. Services are collections of characteristics. A central device may connect to and access one or more of the characteristics of a service of a peripheral device. Characteristics encapsulate a single value or data type having one or more bytes of data as well as zero or more descriptors that describe the value of the characteristic. The descriptors may include information such as human-readable descriptions, a range for the value of the characteristic, or a unit of measure of the value of the characteristics. A Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) may allow a device to discover services offered by other devices and their associated parameters. The services may be identified by universally unique identifiers (UUIDs).